by Daul, Amanda
“Even if we are going to sit here for the next few days, we need a plan and we may as well figure it out now and get it over with, agreed?” he suggested. His skin was shimmering in the golden luminosity of the lamp, tiny beads of sweat forming.
It took Arissa a moment to focus before she could answer simply with a nod. “Agreed.”
He gestured for her to come closer to him, reaching his hand out to her invitingly. His sad eyes were pleading, expressing his longing to be close to her, exactly what she had been thinking herself.
She walked slowly, removing her cloak and revealed her tight, brown shirt she wore underneath. Draping the cloak around his bare shoulders, he caught her fingertips in his own, guiding her around the chair to sit by him. “I know this has always been a painful subject for you, but I think it’s time. Arissa, we have been together a long time and I’ve always respected your wish to keep your past hidden. I know it’s none of my business what you used to do or work for, but like you said, I’m starting to think that’s what this is actually about.”
Arissa had felt her muscles tense drastically when he first began to speak. Somehow, she had known where he had been going with his speech and she suddenly felt like she could panic at any moment. It was true, she had long ago made it clear that her past was behind her and it no longer effected who she was now. She hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, but that was a lie. She found that out more times than she was comfortable with since Cayl had been kidnapped.
She had been a second away from stating very clearly that she could not talk about her past, both for fear of what he would think and that reliving it may make her think it was okay to return to it. It terrified her to think about it.
The moment she opened her mouth to speak, he quickly cut her off and added, “It may be the only way. Just remember who we’re both fighting for now.”
Damn it..., she thought to herself. He was right. Already, her stomach was quivering just at the thought of thinking back to the painful years before she had met Cayl.
Chapter Sixteen
Arissa had moved away from Cayl and was now pacing the length of the room, refusing to meet his eye, only trying to gather her thoughts. Figuring out what to say was harder than she realized; her brain was fighting her, attempting to break into a panic.
“Arissa...honey,” he called out gently to her, appearing saddened about how she was feeling, but she couldn’t answer for a moment. She stopped where she was, leaning on one of the shelves. Her eyes drifted over the different supplies that were neatly packaged and stored away. On the floor under the bottom shelf was a large chest. Just for the sake of having something distracting for a moment, she reached down and pulled the heavy chest out, almost unable to lift it. The arched lid was secured by metal tabs and when Arissa flicked both tabs back, the top popped open. When she pulled it open, it revealed stacks of clean and folded clothes, both men’s and women’s. She quickly grabbed the first shirt of the men’s side she saw, a dark, charcoal grey with buttons, and closed the lid again, returning the chest.
She filled her lungs with air and let it out slowly before turning back to meet Cayl. A few minutes alone in her own world perhaps helped calm her, but she still felt sick about having to reveal her deepest and darkest secrets to the man she loved most. The rationalizing voice in the back of her mind that she rarely ever listened to told her that no matter what he knew about her, there was nothing that would ever make him stop loving her. They had been through too much together that their bond was unbreakable, Arissa had always thought, but now she felt herself doubting.
Just do it and get it done with, she tried to convince herself. She felt ashamed of herself, appearing unable to control her own self. Thinking about what Cayl had said about who they were fighting for made her think, and even if she was mortified of her own past, she had to admit that it was the strongest connection they had to proving her innocence by finding out who had set her up.
This time Arissa pulled the second chair closer to Cayl after she offered the new shirt to him. Clearly painful for him to move, she had helped as much as possible, wanting nothing more than to be able to rest and sleep and continue living without feeling trapped and run down.
Her dark golden, bronzed skin shone attractively in the firelight, but her shadowy eyes spelled sorrow.
“Arissa, I can only assume that by your reaction that you’re ashamed of your past. Whatever it is, I promise that I won’t be. I love you and I made you the promise to always stand by you, no matter what. You know that I’m not about to break that promise to you.” His words were tender, matching his lowered voice as he reached out and gently held one of her hands. “Whatever it is, you can tell me without being afraid.”
Nodding in agreement, Arissa allowed herself one more deep breath before finally summoning her courage.
Her voice sounded strained and she had to clear her throat several times in order for her to sound even remotely like herself. “I don’t even know where to start. You know that my parents were killed when I was three. I was brought to the orphanage where I stayed for a few years, but after the war got worse, even things like hospitals and orphanages began to fall apart. A lot of the kids were taken into homes but there were still a lot who were left to fend for themselves and I was one of them. I remember when I was eight years old and the village I had been born and raised in was under attack. The orphanage had been hit and was on fire. I was one of the last groups they could get out of the building before the whole thing was destroyed. After that, we were on our own.
“I had no idea what to do, I barely even remember. There was one older girl that I had gotten to know and we stuck together for a while on the streets. Sometimes we could find a bit to eat between attacks and raids, and some days we went without. Then one day about two months after the orphanage had burned, my friend was killed. We were hiding from the cold in an alley and this man was there. He took her and he...he killed her later on. I didn’t even know her name because she didn’t know it herself, she had been in the orphanage that long. I remember hiding behind something in the alley and he never knew I was there. I was too afraid to come out for days, even though I was starving.”
It almost felt like she had been teleported back to those moments, reliving the repressed memories so vividly in her mind that she wasn’t even aware of Cayl or her present surroundings. It was suddenly flooded from her thoughts and she continued on. “I don’t know how I survived as long as I did. Eventually I thought to get out of the city and try to live off of the forest, and I did for a while. That’s how I learned to kill and eat just about anything I could find. I don’t know exactly how long I was there for, but I’d guess about a year had passed. That’s when I met Landon. He was older and for whatever reason, he sort of caught me by surprise one day in the forest. At first I thought he was a solider or someone who would catch me and drag me back to the city limits. But I was too scared to run away and he talked. There was something about the way he spoke to me that made me feel like I could trust him. I’ve thought about that a lot and maybe somewhere in my mind, he reminded me of the father that I never knew. I used to tell myself that a lot over the years.”
Arissa didn’t have the courage to look up at Cayl to see his expression. She was afraid of what she would see. “Landon brought me home with him and his parents sort of adopted me into their family. He was already working with his father in the blacksmith shop, but his mother kept me in the house and tried to teach me things that I was never taught in the orphanage. It was his mother who taught me to read and write because there were few places around there that had schools anymore. Everyone was afraid of the attacks and stayed as hidden as much as they could. It didn’t stop me from going out into the town, though, when I was older. I would get in fights and if I had the opportunity to steal something, I would. I was so used to having to fight for every piece of food I found; it was hard to change my habits. But for some reason I felt like I belonged out on my own, instead of in Landon’s fa
mily. I loved them and I was grateful, but I felt out of place.
“I was about fifteen when I got in a really bad fight. There were these two boys, hardly older than me, in an alley, clearly a couple of street rats. They were hassling this younger kid who had gotten lost in the streets while trying to find his way home from one of the alley markets. For some reason it made me think of myself when I was this child’s age and realized how I must have looked. I felt like I needed to defend this kid and I did. I had been in a lot of fights before then, but I got really beat up in that alley. But when I was lying on the ground with what I’m sure was a broken rib, I watched them walk away and suddenly felt so angry, I couldn’t even control it. I could hardly breathe from the pain in my side, but I got back to my feet and I grabbed a broken board from an old stand that used to be in the alley.”
Arissa’s eyes were distant and her skin was a pale, ghostly white. Her muscles trembled as she relived the story. “I didn’t know that I could hurt someone like that. I was angry and I wanted revenge. I murdered a man that night. The moment that it happened, I felt something in me and I was terrified. I wasn’t scared because of what I had done. I was scared of how satisfied I felt.”
She literally couldn’t feel anything. It was like her entire being had gone numb. She didn’t know who she was still able to speak. Arissa felt moisture gathering in her eyes as she let her gaze drop to the floor as she described to Cayl how she had ran back to Landon’s house as quickly as she could. Once she arrived, she had grabbed a small bag and filled it with the few clothes she owned and left. She hadn’t been able to force herself to explain or say farewell to Landon or his parents, she had just wanted to run. That would have been the end of an era in her life, if Landon had not caught her at the door.
“Before I even said anything, I knew that he knew. I don’t know if it was my expression that gave me away or if he had already heard about a murder, but he knew what I was doing. He didn’t even try to stop me, he just asked if he should expect to ever see me again. Remember, this was at the time when the General had just taken over the territory as leader and there weren’t enough men in his army yet to have guards and soldiers in every settlement. I didn’t have to worry about being arrested because there were no laws to be broken. I just needed to leave. I told Landon that and he just let me go, but not before saying his last words to me, asking me to just find a way to stay alive.”
Finally, Arissa had to force herself to suck in a huge breath and rise to her feet, still avoiding Cayl’s gripping eyes. She circled the small table that Cayl was still seated at, feeling that she had to keep active while she spoke. “I did alright for myself. I was a thief and at the time, I was proud of it. I believe what I had been told all those years in the orphanage, that I was completely worthless, just another face, another useless criminal wandering the streets. I guess even then people knew what I would grow up to be and I had proved them right.
“By then I was old enough to be able to navigate the cities and villages I travelled to, and disappear before anyone realized I had stolen something from a food stand or a clothing store. I got my first throwing knife and gun by stealing it off of a horse that was tied outside a tavern. And I used that gun more times than I want to admit. Whenever I was camping or hiding in the forests and a stranger tried to take something from me, the poor, defenceless woman who was all alone...”
The soles of her feet were beginning to hurt from pacing. She’d spent so much time talking at this point that the sound of her own voice was tiring her out. All she wanted was to sleep, but if she didn’t finish the story now, she knew there was a good chance she would never let herself tell it again. Arissa didn’t allow herself to even wonder what Cayl was thinking of her now. She had never told him of the way she had grown up or managed to survive without a family for so long. Of course, it was public knowledge that she had been brought to the General years ago as a prisoner and had somehow ended up working with him, but even Cayl didn’t know the specifics as to why or how.
“That’s all my life had turned out to be. Killing and stealing and manipulating to my avail, just to get by. I think that a part of me felt that it was redemption for the life that was stolen from me. I did have a family at one time, but they were killed before I had the chance to even know them. I never believed that life was fair, only that if you didn’t fight for life, someone else was going to. I never hurt people unless it was a matter between my life and theirs. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had unknowingly built quite a reputation for myself as a heartless criminal.
“As time went on, the General’s army began to grow and, eventually, the things I had done began to catch up to me. It wasn’t long before patrols were sent to arrest me and ‘bring me to justice’. I will never deny that I wasn’t a completely traitorous person, but I was only doing what so many other people in our cities were doing, Cayl. This is what our world has come to be, fallen from what it once was and now the only goal the world has is to survive. I was only one among thousands of criminals, but they chose to idolize me as the example. I later found out it was because my father had apparently been an important figure in the government alongside the General before he had become leader, but had been executed because of treason rumours. They never even tried to prove anything, they just killed him and my mother without a second thought. No wonder their daughter turned out this way...” Arissa’s voice nearly hissed, her eyes filling with deep, burning hatred as they focused completely on a twisted knot in the wood on the room walls.
“I evaded the soldiers for a while, just because I could. I had become so skilled in running away that it took them weeks to even find out where I was. But I grew tired of searching for nothing and I understood that I simply had nothing to live for in life. It’s why I didn’t put up a fight when the soldiers finally captured me. I just accepted that my life was meaningless and not worth living, and soon it would be over. Of course...” Arissa felt her lip twitch slightly, not completely into a smile, but she was still amused by what had happened to her next. “When they brought me to the reformatory in Vailwood, my entire outlook on life changed. I finally realized there had been something out there waiting for me, something worth living for. You remember that.”
For the first time since she had started the depressing story, Cayl spoke up, his voice soft. “That’s when we met.”
Finally, Arissa turned and forced herself to take in his expression, no matter how disappointed or wary she expected it to be. She braced herself for a look that told her he no longer accepted her for who he had believed she was and she couldn’t blame him. But she was shocked when she saw his green eyes were saddened and considerate, tears stains pouring from them as he stared back at her in a longing, accepting gaze.
Chapter Seventeen
“You know I’m the last person to get all mushy and stuff, but I knew that when we met I had a purpose and that somehow, cosmically, we were meant to be together.”
Cayl didn’t bother to attempt to hide the tears of sadness that had swelled from his eyes. “I remember when they brought you in. You were this amazingly beautiful, depressed woman whose eyes were empty and your face just rang in despair.”
“The cell was the closest thing I had to a home since I had left Landon’s. I didn’t know that my true love was sitting on other side of that wall from me.” Arissa reached up to touch the side of his face, brushing the last tear away with her thumb.
“How did you get from incarcerated prisoner to working beside the General?” Cayl asked, curving his arm around her waist to pull her closer to him.
“It was not my first choice, believe me,” Arissa let herself rest gently on his knee, careful of his bandaged wound. “At first I had no intentions of trying to escape. Honestly, I was just tired of my life. But then...this really cute guy next to me who had gotten himself arrested for assaulting an official soldier started talking to me.”
“It's not my fault this pretty girl with dark hair and gorgeous eyes had nothing b
etter to do than talk.”
Arissa gazed at him, not being able to control the sly smile that curled up on her lips. One look in his eyes and she could again feel everything they had been through and could feel the intense weight of guilt and shame rising from her shoulders.
“You were trying to defend your sister when that soldier invaded your house. You had every right to protect your family and your home. It made me so mad when you told me about that. I think that's what made me realize that I did have an actual, useful purpose in life.”
“By seducing your cell mate?” Cayl dared to joke, nudging Arissa slightly.
She shot him a hard look, almost playfully. “Do you want to tell the rest of the story?”
He didn't reply, only arched an eyebrow, challenging her dare. Arissa continued. “Suddenly I wanted to live, and because you wouldn't leave me alone and that resulted in me growing to actually care about you, I had a plan. The guards had told me that I was to be publicly executed the next day, but I demanded that I had something important that the General would want to hear.”
“You always were a great liar.”
“Again, would you like to tell the story?” Arissa exclaimed, grinning, but then remembered that even though they were underground, that she should still take the precautions of staying quiet. “And my lying got your ass out of jail, so I wouldn't be complaining! I think that the General knew what I was capable of and honestly, I think he was afraid of me, that's why he never questioned an execution, he wanted me gone. When the soldiers came to bring me to him that last day, do you remember what I told you before I left?”
Cayl watched her, but acted as if he had no intention of speaking. Arissa rolled her eyes and tossed her head slightly back. Her voice grew husky as she whispered, “You can talk now.” Her hand was hooked around the back of his neck, where her fingers played with his tresses of brown hair, which was longer than she remembered.